


Blooming On My Grave

by Ellie_Rosie



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Ice Skating, Cemetery, Fate, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 12:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13659219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellie_Rosie/pseuds/Ellie_Rosie
Summary: For all the twists and turns that Yuuri Katsuki’s life had taken, this was by far the strangest.AU in which Yuuri has never felt so alone, Victor has never felt more alive, and Makkachin has a sixth sense. Ghosts are people too, you know.





	1. Lonely Dreams

Phichit’s problem, he thought, was that his heart was simply too big. Or, no, it wasn’t big _enough_ for all of the feelings he was trying to fit inside it - hell, it wasn’t even big enough to contain the circumference of any _one_ of his super-sized feelings. Currently, Phichit felt that he’d need an entire cathedral to contain his sympathy alone, with a separate side chapel to house his concern.

He watched his friend sip his tea like it was the only thing that mattered, with such intense focus that it could only mean that it was a way of not focussing on anything else.

Phichit had known Yuuri Katsuki since the older man had moved to St Petersburg to study almost three years ago; he’d watched Yuuri flounder, flail, and then, finally, drop out. And he’d been totally unable to help. Sure, he’d thrown the metaphorical life ring - as he had continued to do at least once week, be it in the shape of a phone call or a cup of tea - but you can’t _force_ someone to grab onto it.

There was tension in Yuuri, Phichit could tell, and not even the incense burning in the corner could diffuse its shadow from the room. The bags under Yuuri’s eyes seemed to have become part of the eye itself, turning them into two black holes in Yuuri’s face, uninviting tunnels into an underworld that Phichit thought he’d rather avoid sinning his way into.

“Yuuri -”

The addressed turned his eyes up to his friend, dark hellmouth tunnels and all. His fingertips pressed notes into the flower-thin rim of the teacup.

Phichit swallowed the forming sentence of outreaching worry, and instead said, “finished your tea?”

Yuuri nodded, opened his mouth as though to say something but then just bit commas into his lower lip instead.

“Well, I’ve been reading this book,” Phichit pressed on, and it felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain. No, up a sheer cliff-face. “I’ve been reading this book, about tea-leaf reading. Hey - don’t roll your eyes at me!” Although, secretly, Phichit would say a million silly things a million times over just to get that level of boyish reaction out of Yuuri again, to see some essence of life in him. “Seriously, seriously. It’s fool-proof. Can I read your leaves?”

“You know I don’t believe in that stuff, Phichit.” Yuuri’s voice was burden-heavy.

“But what about that time when I read your cards, and they said great fortune would befall you and, and, the very next day that vending machine gave you _two_ chocolate bars?” He said it as though it were irrefutable proof of his own psychic abilities, rather than testament to the sorry state of their student accommodation. “Or how come I always know when it’s going to rain?”

They locked eyes, dark graphene against aching brown. Fanatical belief, however, will always beat apathy - no matter which side is in the right - and so Yuuri found himself nodding. Not quite a proper nod, just a ducked bow of defeat.

Phichit sprang to his feet, going to the wooden dresser that lined one wall of the cosy kitchen in which they were sat at his little round table, covered in a red-and-gold table cloth (actually a scarf Phichit had rescued from a local thrift shop) and barely big enough for one, let alone two. It doubled as his place of business, this little room with flagstone tiles and patchy rag-rugs. His business, of course, being capitalising on what he saw as his God-given abilities to divine the future, no matter how murky the view might be. His dresser - another gift from the thrift shop gods - was a scattered patchwork of second-hand tomes and odd instruments, a copy of _Palmistry for Dummies_ next to a small pewter cauldron, in turn next to a grubby crystal ball that was probably more likely plastic than crystal. He plucked up a small, carved lacquer box, grinning to himself. Looking to the future, he was certain, to all the bright things that he was certain awaited his good friend, was sure to cheer Yuuri up.

“I thought you wanted to read my tea leaves,” Yuuri said softly as Phichit sat back down opposite him, opening the little box to reveal a deck of dogeared tarot cards nestled amongst a red velvet lining. “Do you use cards in leaf-reading?”

“No. But, seeing as you were so sceptical about the leaves, I thought we’d stick to the tried-and-true tarot. Now,” he gave the cards a quick shuffle, “pick a card. We’re going to see what glories Fate has in store for you, non-believer.” 

After a moment of hesitation, Yuuri slipped out the card from the top of the pack. He turned it over and, _shit_ , Phichit thought, _just my luck_. Yuuri had picked out a thick, yellowed card with a skeleton on it, flecks of flesh still hanging from it’s vacuous ribcage. Its mouth was open, and whether it was a groan or a scream was indeterminable, the grotesque uncertainty of it was unsettling, like not knowing what is outside your bedroom window when it’s too dark to see. Its eye-holes were the worst part, though, because Phichit had seen those dark otherworldly tunnels before.

Yuuri reached to pick another card, but Phichit snatched the deck out of read, deciding that he’d done enough damage for one day. 

“No, I think that’s enough tarot for now.” He tried a sheepish laugh, but Yuuri was just blinking across at him, neither visibly freaked out or amused by the whole thing. It was unnerving. “This,” he picked up the skeleton card between his fingers and, as soon as he made contact with the hour-glass boarder of it, the _doesn’t mean anything_ that had been waiting in the wings died on his lips. 

Because it did. It _did_ mean something. Phichit could _feel_ it, like a cosmic, unscratchable itch. His fingertips, where they’d touched the card, had gone cold.

“Phichit?” Yuuri’s voice was small but the concern, the real true feeling, was there. “Are you okay? It’s just a game, I don’t mind that I got the death card. It doesn’t mean anything, right?” Still Phichit said nothing. “Right?”

“It means,” Phichit licked his lips, “that you need to go to the cemetery.”

“What?” Yuuri blinked his confusion, a small v shape of thought settling between his eyes. “The cemetery? Which one?”

“Any one. The closest one. Just, go to a cemetery, okay?”

“But, why would I need to go to a - ”

“Just! Just promise me you’ll go.” Phichit was so moved by his conviction that his body shook, his breath coming in heaving pants, great big mountains moving inside of him. He’d never felt like this before, like his insides had turned to sand but his feet, his foundations, were rock, sediment buried deep into the meteoric history of the world. “ _Promise_ me.”

Yuuri, bewildered and now maybe more concerned for Phichit than Phichit was for him, nodded.

“I promise,” he said, in that small voice that had stolen away the potential vibrancy that Phichit had once seen in him. Yuuri had always been shy, sure, but never quite like this, and not to Phichit, not for a long time. “I promise.”

And he meant it. For all the emptiness in the world, Yuuri was still Yuuri, and Yuuri never broke his promises. Especially not ones made to Phichit.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Victor liked looking at Makkachin’s eyes. The reason for this was that the poodle was the first living thing who had actually looked at Victor like she could _see_ him for over a decade. 

“Isn’t she a good girl,” cooed Chris, a tall, angelic-looking Swiss man who had taken on the role of Victor’s best friend since the two had become neighbours some eleven years ago. Still, though, Victor was of the persuasion that his plot was better, as Chris’ was under the chilly shade of an ancient elm tree. Not that the cold particularly bothered either of them, but the aesthetics of sunlight was an issue that both felt keenly. “Don’t you think she deserves a good scratch behind the ears, Vitya?” 

“ _Da_ , you know I do.” He scowled at his friend, where Chris was leant cockily against some decrepit old gravestone so fuzzed over with moss as to be unintelligible. Victor looked back to the fluffy ball of poodle that he’d claimed as his own. Her tongue hung out in a big slobbery exclamation point, and he knew exactly what she wanted. “So, how do I do it again?”

Chris heaved out a sigh but Victor paid it no mind; it wasn’t like either of them had anything better to do, or didn’t have a gluttonous over-abundance of time on their hands. Eternity, Victor had discovered, was indeed a laboriously long time. 

Victor watched intently as Chris crouched down in front of Makkachin. The poodle, apparently knowing what was coming next, wagged her tail so fast that it seemingly disappeared. Sure enough, her ears twitched and she tilted her head into the apparently invisible force causing the twitching. 

It wasn’t fair, Victor thought, how _easy_ Chris made it look. He was a natural poltergeist. Victor wasn’t. Besides, Chris had had over thirty years of practise before Victor came along. 

“It’s not a big deal if you can’t do it, Vitya,” Chris said, standing up again, voice gentle. “It’ll come with time.” 

“But _how_ do you do it?” Victor splayed the pale spiderwebs of his hands out to his side, his blue eyes almost translucent in the winter sunshine. “Tell me again.” 

“Well, now it just feels like second nature, I don’t even have to really think about it at all.” Chris caught the look of knife-edge exasperation in Victor’s eyes, and beamed. “But, when I was first learning, I remember it going something like this.” He cleared his throat, like a grand maestro getting ready to conduct his symphony. “One. Clear your mind. Two. Focus on your target like you’re trying to fit a thread through a needle with an eye smaller than a grain of sand.” 

Victor took a deep, lunging breath and then exhaled with dramatic loudness, imagining the sound to be the tide trickling away, carrying the driftwood of his frustration with him. He shut his eyes, opened them again, and set them on Makkachin. The poodle gave him a joyful _woof_ back, but Victor didn’t let himself smile.

“Good.” Chris clapped his hands together, perhaps enjoying the role of teacher a little bit too much. “Three. Visualise yourself petting Makka. Imagine how soft and bouncy and cloudlike those curls of hers must be.” Victor imagined it, almost salivated over it. It had been over _ten years_ since he’d last been able to pet a dog. “Four. I. I can’t really explain this step. It’s less of a thing you can do, than a feeling you need to feel.” 

Victor sighed, blinking up at him. Makkachin turned her head up to Chris too. 

“Well, what _kind_ of feeling?” 

“I. I don’t know.” Chris gnawed on his lower lip, looking up to the clouds as though for inspiration. 

“It’s _love_ , idiots.” 

All three of them - Victor, Chris, and Makkachin - turned at the interruption. There, made glitteringly transparent by the early-setting sun, was Yuri Plisetsky, all aristocratic angles. He had been the grandson of some imperial Russian archduke or another, a victim of an assassination attempt gone wrong, and the gilded finery he had been buried in would have looked laughable on anyone any less assured of their own importance and ethereal beauty. Although physically the youngest of the three dwellers of the Weeping Madonna Cemetery - nestled like a silver and emerald ring in the sepia velvet heart of St Petersburg - Yuri had been dead the longest, and was thus regarded as the high authority on all things post-death. 

“Love?” Victor blinked, the tilt of his head matching Makkachin’s in mirror confusion. “I have to be in _love_ to be able to pet Makka?” 

“No.” As he walked towards them, the grass at his feet seemed to bow respectfully away from Yuri. “You just have to remember how it _feels_. And it’s not _technically_ petting. It’s displacing the air in such a way that it creates an inanimate semblance of contact and/or motion. You won’t be able to physically _feel_ the fleabag.” 

Victor, although he mostly knew this already, deflated as much as if there had been actual breath in him.

“Alright, Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Chris cut in, “that’s enough from you. Jeeze, you’ve been dwelling on your teen angst for over a century. Would it kill you to take a day off?”

Gesturing down at himself, from the tiny gold bible hanging from his neck on a gold chain to the black buckled shoes on his feet, Yuri said, “evidently not.” With that, the boy, who had been fifteen when three separate bullets breached his skull, flounced off to move the flowers from one of the newer graves to rest against his own mansion of a marble tomb.

 _Teenagers_ , Victor thought, _are the same no matter the century._ He wasn’t without sympathy for Yuri, however, as he often thought how awful it would have been to be permanently stuck as his fifteen-year-old self.

“He’s right, though,” Chris resumed after a moment, cupping his chin in artistic thought. “It _is_ love. Or maybe lust. It’s a tingling feeling, definitely. Deep in a place that feels like your stomach but is a fathom away from it. A physical feeling in an un-physical place. Butterflies, to borrow a cliché.” 

But Victor’s focus was broken, and there was no use in trying again. Not least, Victor thought, because he couldn’t recognise any of the symptoms of such a feeling as Chris was describing.

It _must_ be love, Victor decided. Lust he had definitely felt before, and could have conjured that up with ease. But love? That was an entirely different realm to him, and an unknown one at that. He had never felt love during his lifetime, had never had much time for it, and now, in death, Victor felt sure that capturing such a feeling was impossible. Love, after all, was for the living.

His thoughts on the subject were ruptured, however, by the bounding bark of Makkachin as her nose caught a scent - a rabbit, maybe, or a mole - and she was haring off. Never had Victor seen a grand old lady run so fast. He smiled after her.

Chris patted his back, conciliatory.

“Don’t worry, Vitya. You’ll get it next time.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was cold, but that’s all it was. Yuuri didn’t _care_ that it was cold, there was no secondary emotion. And he knew that, was painfully aware of his own unfeelingness, but no follow-up feeling could be found no matter how wide he cast his nets. 

For some time he had suspected that something was wrong with himself, and his afternoon with Phichit had only served to confirm this. Phichit had used to look at him like a sunflower greeting its namesake, but now Phichit never smiled when he looked at Yuuri. At least, not in a _real_ way. Yuuri was becoming a burden, an obligation, a lump of weight doing nothing but taking up valuable flotation devices. He felt all of this and yet he felt . . . _nothing._ He felt no motivation to fix it, no energy to even begin to think about _how_ to fix it, and, besides, the problem had grown so all-encompassing, into a thick greying cocoon of _nothingness_ , that the act of the fixing was such a herculean task that Yuuri wasn’t sure if it was even possible. Defeat was as inevitable as it would be crushing; equal only to the exhaustion of the whole thing. And to make matters worse, it would seem that he was brining Phichit down with him.

Yuuri shook his head. He wasn’t bringing Phichit down with him. It was arrogant to think that he took up such a large piece of his friend’s attention. But whatever little piece he did absorb was too much.

He squeezed his hands around the bouquet he’d picked up from a street vendor on his way across the city; a seafoam of white carnations forming a thrill around the high gold-and-red jewels of a trio of chrysanthemums, with a few yellow tulips peeking out from under the white outer-layer in a sunspot petticoat. The flowers had cost him the money he’d planned to spend on dinner that evening, but he couldn’t help it. He’d been walking along, when his nose had caught the spongy green scent of the florist’s stall and suddenly the little voice in his head had said, _you better get some or else you’ll look like a weirdo in the cemetery, people will look at you and think you’re just there for the fun of it,_ but now, walking along, he could feel eyes on him like mosquitos on an oppressive midsummer night, and the little voice was buzzing away with _you look like such a total loser, walking along with a great big bunch of flowers like that, like_ you’ve _got anyone to give flowers to!_

And so it was that when he came to cross the road to the cemetery - the Weeping Madonna Cemetery - Yuuri was quite away in his own head, his hands feeling hot and itchy as they clutched his bouquet tight enough to turn the stems into pulp.

He kept his eyes down on his flowers, like some kind of solemn flower boy cast in gothic relief.

Yuuri only looked up when he stepped out into the road, upon hearing the ragged yet warm rumble of a dog barking. He looked across to see a large, dusky-brown poodle stood in the cemetery entryway. She looked like a joyful scribble of a thing and, for a moment, Yuuri half-smiled in a way that was more real than any facial expression he’d made at all in the past week, at least. He looked to his side and there, coming right at him from around the sharp corner past the cemetery’s edge, was a speeding blur of a sports car. His breath hiking up into his throat, Yuuri jumped back onto the pavement just in time. The poodle barked again, this time softer, and Yuuri couldn’t help but feel like it meant something.

He crossed the road - successfully this time - intent on going to fuss over this miraculous mass of corkscrew curls. Only, when he reached down to pet her, she darted back, wiggling down into a pouncing position. _She wants to play,_ Yuuri thought. _Maybe Phichit was right to send me here after all_.

The poodle zoomed off, moving faster than any such large, ungainly-looking creature had any right to, and Yuuri found himself, inexplicably and joyfully, running after her, leaving a trail of technicolour petals behind him.

As he jogged through it, Yuuri took stock of the Weeping Madonna Cemetery. It was grandiose, a sprawling forest of granite and marble, the gravestones here and there interspersed with weeping angels and tombs larger than Yuuri’s bedroom. He passed one such tomb that was laden with fresh flowers - bunches that put his own carefully-chosen bouquet to shame - and noted that the resident had been only fifteen when he’d died; he felt bittersweetly glad that the child still seemed to be remembered, and unnerved at having an almost identical first name. 

Yuuri finally caught up with his four-legged saviour at a grave at the edge of the cemetery, just outside the shadow that pooled at the foot of a creaking old frost-covered tree. In fact, the plot seemed to be spot-lighted by the sun as it melted like butter behind the horizon. 

Stepping into that weep of gentle gold felt like stepping inside a gilded bubble. The voice in his head was muffled, the traffic buzzing outside the high brick walls of the cemetery faded into nothing more than a shadow of a sound. For the first time in a long time, Yuuri didn’t feel so weighed down by the clag of nothingness that had nestled itself into each of his lungs like tar. He could breathe again, and not find it an effort. In short, Yuuri found himself feeling - not happy - content. At peace. And that was enough.

He dropped to his knees by the grave stone, glancing briefly at the name - _Victor Nikiforov_ \- as he gently propped his flowers against it, a trade of beauty in return for a rest in this dead man’s patch of Heaven.

Yuuri knotted his fingers in the poodle’s curls, letting them run like whispers through his hands. She lacked a collar, and nobody was around, but she seemed happy and healthy enough. Maybe, he thought, she belonged to one of the surrounding houses, or otherwise perhaps was fed and watered by the caretaker.

The sun had melted away into a memory by the time Yuuri stood back up. He patted the crest of the simple grave, and gave a small, respectful bow.

“Thank you for letting me spend the evening with you,” he murmured in his best Russian, and then he walked away, back into the droning cold.

Turning back to take one last look at his new canine friend, Yuuri was amused to see her jumping and darting around, as though playing with ghosts. 

 _Well,_ he thought, _dogs are supposed to have a sixth sense for this kind of thing._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So this is going to be a micro-series (five parts plus an epilogue), with (hopefully) a section going up a day until fin. I needed something to fill my university reading week with and, having just handed in a 107 page dissertation on the effects of fanfiction, this seemed a pretty appropriate celebration.
> 
> The title of this story, and all chapter titles, come from the song Clockwork by Palaye Royale, which served as a key influence/inspiration for the plot to the story. It's something I've been wanting to write for a while, and I hope you guys enjoy it (or, at least, don't think it's totally terrible)!
> 
>  
> 
> Notes:
> 
> 1\. I wanted to play around with perspectives a bit, largely to convey how depression/anxiety is affecting Yuuri. In section one, we see from Phichit's point of view that he's very worried about his friend - but in section two, from Yuuri's point of view, Yuuri sees himself as a burden to Phichit. Obviously, this isn't the case, but because he is in a low place, his mind is making him feel like he is.
> 
> 2\. Death dates aren't exact, but all three of the graveyard gang died at the age they are at the start of season one of the anime. Yurio died sometime either just before or during the Russian Revolution, Chris died in the eighties, and Victor died around 2006/7.
> 
> 3\. Yuuri's bouquet. I picked all three flowers for a reason. White carnations as a symbol of pure long-lasting love, chrysanthemums as in Europe they are used almost exclusively for funerals/graves whilst in Japan they are strongly linked to grief (at least according to Google), and yellow tulips, which represent fresh starts and hope. Mayhaps an attempt at foreshadowing.


	2. Underneath Your Stars

 

 

“Isn’t he _wonderful?_ ” 

“He’s very pretty, yes,” Chris agreed, watching as his friend watched the living, breathing oddity that had taken up a semi-permanent residence at Victor’s graveside. “And here I was, hoping for a bunch of flowers on my grave, when you start sprouting gorgeous men!” 

Victor laughed, a warm hug of a sound, from where was, draped like a Renaissance painting over the back of his gravestone so as to get a better view of the book the beautiful stranger was reading. _Persuasion_ by Jane Austen. In his lifetime, Victor had never had much time for the classics but, reading it over this newcomer’s shoulder, he’d never found the love politics of Georgian England quite so thrilling. 

This was the third book that Victor had consumed in such a way. The second day his surprise visitor had come - immediately after the first - he’d shown up with a thermos flask of tea and a book of haikus which Victor couldn’t really make head nor tail of, but read nonetheless. Quite suddenly he found that he was starving for words, and was delighted when, the day after that, the living man bought along _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ by Oscar Wilde. And now, together, the two of them - after nine days of visits - were halfway through _Persuasion._  

There were bits Victor didn’t understand, or climactic scenes that he felt were hilariously melodramatic rather than serious moments of wire-snapping thrill, but he didn’t care about that. He wasn’t reading these books to _read a book_. Oh no, he was reading over this strange man’s shoulder because, Victor felt, it was the closest thing to a conversation that they could have. 

So far, from both his reading and the _way_ that he read, Victor had discerned this; the man was thoughtful, he was perhaps looking for something, he was easily distracted (several times Victor had noticed him flick back pages to double check), which was perhaps bought on by some kind of melancholia. He was smart, too, and probably a romantic. And he was definitely a _good_ sort of man, Victor knew, because whenever he was in the cemetery, Makkachin followed him around like a munchkin bounding down the yellow brick road. 

So there Victor was, leant over his newly flower-adorned gravestone (he would let Chris take some blooms to decorate his own abode later on), reading over the black-haired man’s shoulder, enjoying the whole metaphorical warmth of the situation as much as Makkachin was apparently enjoying having her ears lazily tweaked from her position with her head lulled in the newcomer’s lap. 

Victor was quite sure that he was well on his way to mastering the art of poltergeist activity, if the way he felt whenever he looked at this man was any indicator. 

He looked up, to where Chris had been, and found his friend had drifted off elsewhere in the cemetery. Had he been gone long? Victor wasn’t sure. Time moved differently when he was with this new - dark, handsome - stranger. 

 _Oh well_ , Victor shrugged, and went back to his reading/conversation.

The peace was soon ruptured however, by the violent flickering of the pages in the reader’s hands. They turned so fast and of their own accord that they turned into a yellowed blur, before the book slammed tightly shut, sandwiching the man’s fingers. Makkachin whimpered, which seemed to be the antidote to the man’s own shock, as he then focused all of his attention on soothing her. 

Victor didn’t need to turn around to see who was responsible for the disruption, but he did anyway, standing up and stretching his back. 

There was Yuri, a smirk cracked into his cheek like a splinter of marble. Mischief shone in his eyes, which only served to be amplified by Victor’s pout. 

“What?” The teenager touched his hand mock-guiltily to his chest. “I thought he deserved to know he wasn’t alone.” 

“I was _reading._ ” 

“No, you were being weird.” Yuri jumped up with the ease of a cat to perch on the thin edge of Victor’s gravestone. “Who is he?” 

“I.” Victor sighed. In his head, he felt like he knew his mourner, but when it came to putting this into words he found that it all sounded rather limp. “I don’t know. He just, started showing up, last Monday. I think he’s lonely.” He grinned, and Yuri raised an already naturally arched eyebrow. “And so am I. Which is _exactly_ what makes us the perfect couple!” 

“ _Couple?_ ” 

“Well, sure. I mean, it’s early days.”

“Vitya,” the nickname came out as a spit of sound, but from the use of it alone Victor knew that whatever was about to be said was not out of meanness - which, in turn, made him feel all the worse. “He’s alive. You are _not._ ” 

“Really?” Victor ran his hands over himself, as though searching frantically for a lost key. “I hadn’t noticed.” 

“ _Victor_.” Yuri’s eyes were stone, and his face had scrunched into a seriousness that conflicted both with his costume and his youth. “He can’t see you, hear you, smell you, feel you. This whole thing is sheer ridiculousness and, as you fr- as your _acquaintance,_ I feel it is only right to advise you to quit this lunacy.” 

“Oh, Yuri, Yuri, Yuri.” Victor rolled his eyes. He reached to pat his young friend’s back, only for the teenager to dodge moodily away. “What do you know about it? You’re only fifteen. Besides, when _you_ died, people were still getting married to their cousins like it wasn’t gross.” 

“I have been around,” Yuri gritted out, planting down onto his feet, alight with fury, “ _far_ longer than you. I am not a child. And I know that - even if he _could_ converse with you - you don’t fall in love over the course of a week.” 

“Sure you do. Romeo and Juliet knew each other for less than 24 hours before they got married.” 

Yuri looked very much like his jaw was about to drop to the ground, or otherwise that his eyes were about to roll out of his head. In all his years, he had never met someone so persistently exasperating as Victor Nikiforov. He was like a glaring ray of light that you couldn’t shield your eyes from. 

“So, what? Two households, both unalike in mortality, in the fucking _graveyard_ where we lay our scene? In _Romeo and Juliet_ ,” Yuri dead-panned, beyond the point of being astounded, “they _both_ die at the end.” 

“Well,” Victor shrugged, “maybe we’re more like _West Side Story_ then.” 

Yuri made a sound like a hissing cat and stormed off, most likely to lament his woes to Christophe who, as something of a gossip merchant despite his deeply limited society, would lap it all up and then feed it back to Victor later. 

Victor’s attention was snapped up by a sound he hadn’t heard since the morning of his death some ten years ago; the ringing of a telephone. He watched as his visitor hurriedly, almost hungrily, fished a strange-looking device out of his jacket pocket - a thin, sleek black rectangle, which was undoubtedly the source of the ringing, but there was no keypad. Whilst Victor pondered this, he watched the living man take the call. 

He watched, his unbeating heart throbbing like an infected wound, as the bright peak of a smile that had illuminated the man’s face - which had added a stunning lightness to his features that had made Victor think that he maybe did know what love felt like - evaporate into a storm cloud. 

“No,” the man said, speaking in a clinically practised Russian, “no, sorry. This is Yuuri Katuski. I think you’ve got the wrong number. Yeah. Sorry.” 

Victor couldn’t help himself; he swallowed down the obstruction forming in his throat and said, “it’s alright. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

But, of course, the man didn’t hear him. He just ended the call, gave Makkachin one last pat, and then started to drag himself off in the stretching direction of the cemetery gates. 

Victor had never seen anyone look so small, so lonely, so desperately sad. Never before had he missed touch so much; this man, quite clearly, was in need of a good hug, and Victor ached to be the one to give it to him. 

As this settled in the hollow of Victor’s stomach, one positive thought did come to him. 

 _Yuuri Katsuki,_ he savoured it like a secret. _Yuuri Katsuki. I know his name._

* * *

 

 

The book of haikus. _The Picture of Doiran Gray_ by Oscar Wilde. _Persuasion_ by Jane Austen. _Tuesdays with Morrie_ by Mitch Albom. _The Grapes of Wrath_ by John Steinbeck. A book about the life of Rasputin. A book in Japanese that Victor of course couldn’t read, but pretended to anyway - and, besides, the lack of words to understand meant more time reading Yuuri himself. _Arcadia_ by Tom Stoppard, which Victor found delightfully pretentious. _The Hunger Games_ by Suzanne Collins, which they got through in one day. _The Bell Jar_ by Sylvia Plath. 

Yes, Victor had started to measure the time he’d spent with Yuuri in books, and their current count was ten and a half. 

They had settled into an almost daily routine. Yuuri would come along at around three o’clock, earlier on Sundays. Makkachin would herald his arrival by racing off to meet him at the entryway, singing his praises as she shepherded him straight to Victor’s grave, where Victor was always waiting, having found a previously unheard of abundance of patience. Then they would read together until it became too dark to do so, and both Makkachin and Victor would escort him to the cemetery gates. 

This particular evening, however, was different. Although with the gradient lengthening of the evenings Yuuri was staying longer and longer every day, he had never stayed after dark. Apart from the sun had set over half an hour ago, and Yuuri was still here, their current book - _Gone With the Wind_ by Margaret Mitchell - lifeless at his side. 

Victor watched as Yuuri leant back against his gravestone, the crest of the stone cradling the crown of the younger man’s head, his eyes shut so that his thick eyelashes added an extra halo of darkness to the bags under his eyes. Victor looked down at him, and looking at Yuuri felt like looking at one of the cemetery’s angel statues brought to life, or maybe only half to life. His face was so perfectly smooth, like marble, like it had been carved purely for the purpose of perfection, of being looked at and admired by Victor in that very moment in that very shaft of starlight. 

When Yuuri’s eyes opened, Victor couldn’t help but gasp. Those welling pools of gentle brown were staring straight at him, at his own glacially blue eyes, and it was both something beautiful and something hurting because Victor _knew_ that Yuuri wasn’t stargazing up at _him_ but at the night sky behind him, _through_ him. Nobody, not even when he’d been alive, had ever looked at Victor like that, like he was so utterly everything. 

Yuuri’s eyes became the night sky, the tiny pinpricks of diamond light sinking into the darkness of his pupils, the microcosm of a galaxy that Victor ached to explore. It was the first kind of light he had seen in his visitor’s eyes. 

Something twitched inside Victor and, never one to deny himself any kind of simple pleasure, he padded around to the front of his grave and sat down next to Yuuri, close enough to be a breath away from touching. There he sat, watching the living, breathing man-boy as Yuuri watched the stars. 

Yuuri, one hand fluttering through the curls at the back of Makkachin’s neck, pointed up to the stars. 

“That, up there, is Orion’s belt.” The ellipsis twinkled. Victor shut his eyes and imagined Yuuri was talking to him, not to his dog. “Phichit taught me all the constellations. Or tried to. I seem to be forgetting everything lately.” He sounded so _heavy_ that Victor had to fight the temptation to hold him, to physically bear some of that crushing metaphysical weight. “Orion was a hunter. I think. I’m not sure. I forget.” 

Only when Yuuri let out a gasp of pure light did Victor actually look up at the stars. There, like a Van Gogh brushstroke against the blue-black ink-spill of the sky, was a shooting star. 

“Make a wish, girl,” Yuuri breathed out to Makkachin, and then added, in an even quieter voice, “I wish I didn’t feel so alone.” 

But Victor didn’t hear that because, unbeknownst to the living man next to him, Victor was making his own wish; “ _please_ let him see me, let him hear me. Please, please, whatever magic is up there. Let us know each other. Let us be together, if only for a moment. _Please._ ” 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The evening trickled on, and still, Yuuri didn’t go home. 

Slowly, Victor watched as Yuuri drowsed into an exhaustion-heavy sleep. For a moment, he thought this was a wonderful thing. A glorious thing, even, to be sharing his own resting place in such a way. And then he remembered; he couldn’t feel the cold like Yuuri could and, knowing St Petersburg a heartbeat before spring, Victor could guess that the cold wasn’t just uncomfortable but also, perhaps, dangerous.

As soon as the thought hit, Victor was on his feet, rushing through the cemetery, looking for Yuri or Chris, either of them, someone to help. Someone who would know what to do, which was admittedly limited considering that none of them could either make a sound or leave the cemetery grounds. 

Within seconds that felt like hours, he came across Yuri, who was pacing by the gateway, studiously pretending not to be gazing at the cars zooming past. He raised his eyebrow when he saw Victor approach, wondering, not unjustly, what the silver-haired man had gotten himself into this time.

“Yuri, please. I need your help.” Victor was panting, a superfluous theatrical considering that he didn’t even breathe. “It’s Yuuri. Other Yuuri. Hot Yuuri. He’s fallen asleep.”

“And?” The teenager’s hand bit sharply into his hip, a pose of attitude that, Victor supposed, never went out of adolescent fashion. “What do you want me to do about it? There’s a coat on that bench over there, the caretaker left it behind. Wrap him up in that.” 

“ _Yuri_.” Victor’s voice was a growl, a shade of seriousness he’d never before reached. “You _know_ I can’t move things.”

“No time like the present to learn.” With a shrug, Yuri drifted off in the direction of his tomb, leaving Victor there with an open mouth and stinging eyes, unable to see the soft smile on the teenager’s face. 

Victor sprinted to the bench Yuri had mentioned. Indeed, there was a coat hung over the back. _Perfect_ , Victor thought, taking in its puffy thickness, the three different layers of zippers. It was clearly a coat catered to doing outdoor work for long periods of time, duvet thick and fit for the purpose Victor needed it for. He reached out with his hands, but they passed clean through the scratchy-looking fabric of the outer layer. 

Taking a deep breath, he tried again. What was it that Chris had said? Empty your mind. Focus. Imagine you can feel it. The butterfly, tingly feeling, _love._  

And there it was. Not in his hands exactly, because he couldn’t _feel_ it _,_ but where his hands were over it the coat was responding as though it were being picked up. Walking quick-slow, a balance of not running out of whatever power this was and trying to keep calm focus, Victor made his way back to Yuuri. 

Yuuri was still there, sleeping like the dead, his arms looped loosely, instinctively around the living warmth of Makkachin. _Good girl,_ Victor thought, as he carefully draped the coat over the sleeping man. Yuuri shifted tectonically under the thick green fabric, a tidal ease of a movement, and then nuzzled his nose against the collar. His face smoothed over, and he let out a sigh-snore. 

 _There_ , Victor nodded to himself, _nice and cosy._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuri couldn’t feel his neck. Or his back. Or his nose. Ah, no, there was his back - a thrumming aching yawn of a thing. 

He snuggled deeper into his covers, only - _wait_. His nose twitched. This didn’t _smell_ like home. His fingers twitched against the blanket and no, no, that was way too rough to be his duvet. His sleepy suspicions were confirmed when something wet and hot dragged across his cheek; he _definitely_ didn’t have a dog. Not anymore, anyway.

Yuuri’s eyes pinged open, and he launched to be sitting bolt upright, which was a mistake because the numbing pain in his back fireworked out to effect ever extremity. Wincing, he rubbed at his eyes, the ripple of his yawn cutting through the pale silence of the cemetery.

 _The cemetery,_ Yuuri realised, _shit._

But then, if he’d slept in the cemetery, then whose coat had he been sleeping under?

He looked around and there, sat in a pretzel at the side of the grave, was a man. A man with hair the colour of stardust.

Yuuri’s first thought was, _he’s beautiful._

His second thought was, _shit. I spent in the night in a graveyard whilst a stranger watched me sleep._

For all the twists and turns that Yuuri Katsuki’s life had taken, _this_ was by far the strangest.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thank you very much for reading, and I really hope you liked it! If you have a spare moment, please let me know what you think <3
> 
>  
> 
> Comments:
> 
> 1\. With the phone call at the end of section one, I tried to show how lonely/isolated Yuuri is feeling. He was excited at the prospect of a phone call, thinking it might be a friend, but then he's practically crushed by it turning out to be a wrong number.
> 
> 2\. Was Yurio just being an asshole when he refused to help Victor with the coat? Maybe a bit, yes, but not entirely. He had a suspicion that seeing Yuuri in some kind of perceived danger might give Victor the push required to get him moving things.
> 
> 3\. Victor could move the coat because he now knows how to replicate that feeling Chris was talking about last chapter - does this mean he's in love with Yuuri without even having spoken to him properly? Maybe. Either way, it was his feelings for Yuuri that empowered, enabled him to make the most of his ghostly abilities.
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Victor tells a lie, Yuuri talks, and Victor always wants things he can't have.
> 
> Thanks again for reading! :)


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